Abstract
The gravelly lateritic soils are commonly used for road sub-grade and sub-base course in tropical region due to their good bearing capacity. Whereas, the lack of their ore deposit along or near the corridors of the road construction implies the development of new approach for using these local materials in road construction works. That is why, this study has focused on blending of fine tropical soils with 0/5 mm of crushed basanite to be used for realizing the sub-base course layer. To achieve this aim, mineralogical, chemical and geotechnical tests were performed on crushed basanite and natural fine lateritic soils; and on the mixing materials at 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of crushed basanite on the other hand. The mineralogical and chemical investigation on two facies of natural fine lateritic soils revealed that Silica/Sesquioxide ratios are less than 2 (S/R < 2). With the increasing of the rate of crushed basanite on these natural fine soils, basanite minerals increase in the mixing materials, but the S/R ratios are still less than 2. Moreover, this implies the relative increase of chemical elements in general and the increase of the amount of Ca, Mg, Na, K, Mn elements in particular. Despite the Ca element increases with the rate of mixing, chemical reaction is not implied. Even more, the addition of crushed basanite on fine lateritic soils have positive effects because fine particles, liquid limit, plasticity index, methylene blue values and optimum moisture content decrease, but conserve their geotechnical class or group, according to geotechnical classification standard. However, the maximum dry density, the Californian Bearing Ratio CBR and the unsoaked Californian Bearing Ratio increase with increasing of crushed basanite. Finally the minimum value of UCS obtained from the mixture materials is 1.67 MPa. Therefore, this physical treatment of fine lateritic soils, allows the increase of their bearing capacity. Starting from 30% of mixing, the bearing capacity values are desirable for sub-base material.
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